A first-of-its-kind vaccine to prevent breast cancer has shown overwhelmingly favorable results in animal models, according to a study by researchers at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, Ohio.
The researchers found that a single vaccination with the antigen α-lactalbumin prevents breast cancer tumors from forming in mice, while also inhibiting the growth of already existing tumors. Enrollment in human trials could begin in 2011. If successful, it would be the first vaccine to prevent breast cancer. The research was published in Nature Medicine, online on May 30 and in print in the magazine’s June 10 issue.
“We believe that this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines have prevented many childhood diseases,” said Vincent Tuohy, PhD, the study’s principal investigator and an immunologist at the Lerner Research Institute. “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental. We could eliminate breast cancer.”
In the study, genetically cancer-prone mice were vaccinated, half with a vaccine containing α-lactalbumin and half with a vaccine that did not contain the antigen. None of the mice vaccinated with α-lactalbumin developed breast cancer, while all of the other mice did.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already approved two cancer-prevention vaccines, one against cervical cancer and one against liver cancer. However, these vaccines target viruses-the human papillomavirus (HPV) and the Hepatitis B virus (HBV), respectively-not cancer formation itself.
According to Cleveland Clinic, in terms of developing a preventive vaccine, cancer presents a quandary not posed by viruses. While viruses are recognized as foreign invaders by the immune system, cancer is not. Instead, cancer is an over-development of the body’s own cells. Trying to vaccinate against this cell over-growth would effectively be vaccinating against the recipient’s own body, destroying healthy tissue.
The key, Tuohy said, is to find a target within the tumor that is not typically found in a healthy person. In the case of breast cancer, Tuohy’s research team targeted α-lactalbumin, a protein that is found in the majority of breast cancers, but is not found in healthy women, except during lactation. Therefore, the vaccine can rev up a woman’s immune system to target α-lactalbumin-thus stopping tumor formation-without damaging healthy breast tissue.
The strategy would be to vaccinate women over 40-when breast cancer risk begins to increase and pregnancy becomes less likely. (If a woman would become pregnant after being vaccinated, she would experience breast soreness and would likely have to choose not to breastfeed.) For younger women with a heightened risk of breast cancer, the vaccine might become an option to consider instead of prophylactic mastectomy.
“Most attempts at cancer vaccines have targeted viruses, or cancers that have already developed,” said Joseph Crowe, MD, director of the Breast Center at Cleveland Clinic. “Dr. Tuohy is not a breast-cancer researcher, he’s an immunologist, so his approach is completely different-attacking the tumor before it can develop. It’s a simple concept, yet one that has not been explored until now.”
Tuohy believes that the findings of this study go beyond breast cancer, providing insight into the development of vaccines to prevent other types of cancer. The results show that the antigen used in a cancer vaccine must meet several criteria: it must be over-expressed in the majority of targeted tumors and it must not be found in normal tissue except under specific, avoidable conditions (such as lactation).
Tuohy told Cleveland television station WKYC, “We think that breast cancer is a completely preventable disease in the same way that polio is completely preventable…. There’s nothing fancy about it-we’re vaccinating against something that isn’t there unless you have tumors, so it shouldn’t harm you, and it should kill the tumors.”
